


water on the bridge

by powerandpathos



Series: 19 Days After-Shots [8]
Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: M/M, Mention of blood, Swearing, after-shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 10:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14767673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: An 'after-shot' of Chapter 243.





	water on the bridge

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on my Tumblr](https://agapaic.tumblr.com/post/174301972391/fic-water-on-the-bridge). Loosely inspired by Chelsea Cutler's song, _[Water on the Bridge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBbJUe5sb40)_.

It rains hard enough to bruise after that, the kind of rain that leaves acid in the air, that falls hot and leaves skin cold like sweat, that soaks into every open shutter and every car window, that punishes flower petals and pelts down street crevices and fills up the skyscraper gutters and bubbles out the drains, that soaks every piece of fibre and wood and body stupid enough to be running around in it. That has the uncanny ability to wash away every last remnant of violence that might still bear its mark: dirt, shit, piss, vomit—and blood.

Guan Shan, doubled over at the waist, each breath a stinging pinch in his lungs, blinks away the reddened rainwater beading in his eyelashes, a cut on his head washed somewhat-clean, the grazes on his knuckles stinging.

They’ve found a shop-corner awning to huddle under while they wait out the fading sound of running footsteps and metal bats smashing against railings, just audible beneath the raging peals of lightning. The men chased them through half a mile of the city, but the boys were smaller, faster, and it was inevitable that they would outrun the gang eventually. 

The city was their childhood playground, and they knew the game.

‘Idiots,’ He Tian mutters, rubbing at his wrist, right where Guan Shan had pulled him.

Guan Shan glares at him. He Tian hasn’t got a scratch on him. Boy-fucking-wonder with his dark looks, stupid height, and the ability to throw a loaded punch or swinging kick or jab beneath the ribs or crushing stab at a throat.

 _How?_ Guan Shan wants to ask, and doesn’t.Questions like that are worth something more than their answer, and Guan Shan isn’t sure he even wants to know.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Guan Shan warns him.

He Tian wrings out rainwater from his shirt, but it’s ineffective. The whole thing is soaked. They both are. Guan Shan needs hot water and a bottle of iodine and his bed and sleep for thirteen hours. His skin is pricked with goosebumps, and he knows it won’t take long for a fever to kick in if they stay out long enough. His home’s a forty-minute walk away. He winces.

He Tian notices.

‘Sure,’ He Tian remarks, tone lazy, but still edged. ‘And if I hadn’t, you’d be lying in the gutter with your head caved in and a broken back. And then who would I have to play with?’

‘I’m not a fucking chew toy,’ Guan Shan spits, and breathes through his gritted teeth as a stabbing pain pushes through his ribcage. He ignores it.

By now, the rain has slowed down, the storm a quick thief in the night. Guan Shan hasn’t heard thunder for a few minutes, and the water drips from the awning like stalactites, not the steady river that ran down building window frames an hour before. By morning, the sun will have burnt away any memory of the night—the fight, Guan Shan’s burgeoning pain, the blood and loosened teeth splattered into an alleyway.

He remembers his father’s odd, humoured saying:  _There’s nothing a rainstorm and a few swigs of_ baiju  _can’t make right. Usually one of them will let you see a rainbow._

Thinking about it, understanding it now for the first time, the acid abates under Guan Shan’s tongue, and he goes sullen. ‘And they wouldn’t’ve killed me,’ he tells He Tian. ‘I’m not that valuable to them. You’re the one who made  _death_ be a thing.’

He Tian snorts. He leans back against the store window. There’s water threatening to drip from the dark strands of his bangs. Guan Shan watches it, and somehow it manages to piss him off more. He wonders if he should be grateful for it: that his anger towards He Tian is somehow enough to blur the stabbing pain in his back.

‘Seemed valuable enough to me,’ said He Tian. ‘What is it? You owe them money?’

‘ _I_  don’t owe ‘em  _jack shit_.’

He Tian waves a hand. ‘Semantics,’ he says. ‘You. Your mother. Your father. It’s all the same, once it comes down to family.’

‘You know fuck-all about my family. About family at all.’

Maybe it’s an unfair jab, but Guan Shan isn’t a stranger to it: He Tian’s empty home, a studio apartment for one. It tells an easy story.

‘I think you’re wrong about that,’ He Tian says. He cocks his head. ‘The first part, I mean.’

‘Yeah?’ Guan Shan goads.

‘Yeah.’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes.  _Keep going,_ he thinks.  _Piss me off enough that at least you’ll think I’m grimacing for your bullshit and not because someone swung a metal bat into my fucking spine._

The thought comes in tandem with the memory of He Tian launching a kick into the guy that had swung it—instinctive retaliation. Not because they’d hurt Guan Shan, but because it was point-for-point, and He Tian wasn’t one for losing.

‘I know that your father’s in prison,’ He Tian corrects, voice neutral like he’s talking about school homework. Like they’re kids who live easy lives. ‘I know that your mother’s handling two jobs and extra shifts where she can get them. I know that money is more important to you than how much you hate me.’

His father used to tell him not to hate people—that no one ever deserved that kind of energy from him. That if they were abhorrent enough, cruel enough, unkind enough, then their punishment should be shunning. Ostracisation. Barring from any part of Guan Shan’s life that could hold negativity.  _Lock out the people that hurt you until they can’t hurt you anymore._

And then his dad got locked up, and anger and the poison that came with it—hate—was all that Guan Shan had. For fuel, for his medium, for expression.

It takes different forms. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it’s a sneer, sometimes it’s curling darkness in the back of his throat; sometimes it’s a tear-soaked pillow; sometimes it’s raging cries smothered and muffled with a curled fist, cutting against his teeth. Sometimes it’s just a glare, directed more often than not, lately, at He Tian.

He almost says,  _I don’t hate you._ An homage to his father, rotting away in that cell, thirty years older in the face, in his weathered hands, in his eyes, since last Guan Shan saw him. But that would be a lie. He doesn’t know what he feels for He Tian, but the burning—spite, cynicism—sure feels a lot like hate.

‘D’you want a prize?’ Guan Shan says. ‘A gold star for your efforts?’

‘If you want to reward me,’ He Tian says, lowly, ‘there are other things I have in mind.’

Guan Shan glares at him. The remarks brush off him now, a sticky residue left in their wake. It’s a discomfort that he’s almost grown used to them. Almost.

‘Fuck off,’ he mutters.

He Tian sighs. ‘If you need money… If your mom—’

Guan Shan cuts in. ‘You think if it was that easy I wouldn’t have asked already?’

‘Please. Like your pride isn’t what gets in the way.’

‘At least I  _have_ some.’

He Tian looks at him. ‘What  _you_ have is a chip on your shoulder. A real fucking deep one. Not pride, which is fucking overrated anyway. But don’t dress it up, Guan Shan. No offence, but you can’t afford to.’

Guan Shan bites down on his tongue. He fights off a wave of sudden nausea, and chooses his next words carefully. ‘You’re a real cunt sometimes, He Tian.’

‘Surprisingly, I don’t even have to try.’

Guan Shan wants to laugh at the straight honesty of it. He almost does, but his ribs won’t allow the movement, and he bites back the whimper of pain that threatens to make itself known. Some spark of amusement must show in his eyes, though—He Tian’s returning look is one of dry amusement, and the wryness of it is appealing. It creates some shared humour between them. A camaraderie that lingers on friendship.

Guan Shan thinks it’s a shame things like this—gang fights, She Li—have to inspire something like warmness towards He Tian. He thinks, too, that it’s a shame it can’t be like this all the time between the two of them. In that case, Guan Shan might not be nervous of his company so much, might not feel that twisting knot in his stomach at the mere mention of He Tian’s name.

It could be easy between them, but He Tian’s own words echo back at him:  _Surprisingly, I don’t even have to try_. Things can’t be easy, because He Tian doesn’t know how to make it otherwise.

It’s starting to make sense why He Tian is the way he is. It’s in his hardwiring. Against those men, He Tian knew what to do. Where to block, where to hit, where to dodge. When to run. It was instinctive and natural. It makes sense why He Tian throws punches so easy at Guan Shan: it’s his language. It’s how he gets what he wants. And he’s smart about it. 

He didn’t hold and fight when the odds were too great—not like Guan Shan, who hedges his bets and would have stood his ground until he gurgled his last bloodied breath. There was stupidity in it, some bizarre moment of heroism and martyrdom in He Tian’s plan. But above all there’s a rationality in it—in  _him_ —that’s almost frightening. The way he looks and assesses and judges. Knows where and how to strike and does it exactly as planned.

Guan Shan doesn’t understand the nature-nurture argument, but he knows that no one’s born like that. They get used to it—they adapt to an environment where it’s kill or be killed. Stand up and keep throwing punches or get put down. They conform. They acclimatise to the conditions, like Guan Shan did.

Or they get trained.

Who turns a kid into a creature like that?

‘Did you start it?’ He Tian asks, pulling out a sodden pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

Guan Shan thinks,  _Good luck lighting those,_ and says, ‘They insulted my mom.’

He Tian pauses, cigarette propped in his mouth, then shrugs. ‘Fair game,’ he mutters out the side of his mouth. It takes four swipes of the lighter wheel and a good shake before it sputters out a flame. He Tian’s first drag is long and deep, and he exhales smoke with his eyes closed. Guan Shan shouldn’t be surprised that He Tian gets it lit.

‘They said… said something about my mom paying the debt by taking  _customers_.’ He spits the last word, foul and sullied in his mouth.

He Tian opens his eyes, and latches them onto Guan Shan’s. ‘And you  _didn’t_ want me to cripple them? They deserved it.’ He spits on the ground. ‘ _Fuckers_.’

‘I  _know_ they deserved it,’ Guan Shan grits out. His breathing is feeling sharper now, his lungs harder and more painful to fill. ‘I was thinking about us not getting thrown behind bars. I’m in uniform. You think they wouldn’t be able to pick us out from a line of kids at school?’

‘For a second there I thought you just had a moral compass.’ He Tian takes a drag. ‘And anyway,’ he says, smoke clouding around them until Guan Shan’s eyes water. ‘You wouldn’t have to worry about that. Not with me.’

‘About what? Prison?’

He Tian nods. ‘It’d be taken care of. My family. You’d be—I’d take care of you.’

He stubs out the cigarette on the brick behind him, and grinds the rest of it out under his shoe for good measure. Guan Shan watches the motion, and eyes the flecks of blood on He Tian’s white sneakers. They cost about as much as a month’s rent for Guan Shan’s mom, and he wouldn’t be surprised if He Tian throws them in the trash when he gets home.

‘That’s nice of you,’ Guan Shan says blandly, unsure what to do with the gesture He Tian’s just offered him. It wriggles under his skin and makes him shake with it. What would He Tian want in return for something like that?

Suddenly, Guan Shan’s ribs twinge, a jagged burn that feels like a serrated knife on his insides, and he can’t help but squeeze his eyes shut against the tremor it forces through his body.

‘Guan Shan? What’s wrong?’

When Guan Shan opens his eyes, blinking away the tear-blur, He Tian’s leaning over him, blank-faced, a hand on Guan Shan’s shoulder.

‘My—it’s my back,’ Guan Shan pushes out. ‘Where the bat— _Hey!’_

It’s maddening that it hurts too much to break free of He Tian’s hold on his shoulder when He Tian yanks his shirt up to his throat, but he forces himself to still as He Tian’s hands wander the pale skin of his abdomen, and as He Tian steps behind him to press at the back of his ribcage and—

 _‘Fuck!’_  Guan Shan shouts, voice hoarse. He’s close to vomiting, vision swarming, and he knows it’s not the muggy, after-storm air that’s making his skin burn.

‘Fractured rib,’ He Tian mutters, barely loud enough for Guan Shan to hear. ‘Maybe broken. There’s already bruising so if it’s punctured a lung—’

‘I can’t go to hospital.’

He Tian looks at him flatly, but there’s a question lingering there too. Guan Shan’s not unused to being looked at like that by He Tian, like there’s some enigma in Guan Shan yet to unravel before him.

‘If your lung’s punctured then you’ll die,’ He Tian tells him. ‘Don’t be an idiot about this.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Guan Shan says, throat tight. His teeth are chattering now, and he’s only half-aware that He Tian’s mostly keeping him standing. It had been fine before He Tian started fucking pushing at him, like always, and now it’s like the pain of it is all that he can register, like always, and everything else is backdrop that he has to fight to focus on. ‘I can’t afford it. My mom—Those guys had every right to do what they did. Should’ve killed me. My mom could get a place for herself. One less mouth to feed—’

‘Oh, fuck off, Guan Shan,’ He Tian snaps. ‘That chip I was talking about? Really fucking big right now. Be grateful that I’ll pretend all this is delirium when you’re better.’

‘You don’t—’

‘Understand? I understand that you’re an idiot.  _You_ don’t understand what I meant by  _I’ll take care of you_.’

‘And owe you what?’

He Tian looks exasperated. ‘I don’t know, Guan Shan. Do me the favour of just staying alive, alright? That’ll be enough for me.’

‘’Cause you need someone to play with, right?’

He Tian’s expression is almost fond, almost regretful, but mostly arrogant. ‘Right. Exactly. That’s all.’

Guan Shan shakes his head and puts an arm around He Tian’s shoulder, knowing He Tian can take the weight. ‘Just—just get me some fucking morphine, yeah?’

He Tian rolls his eyes. He starts walking them towards the street, dialing a number in his phone in one hand, the other wrapped around Guan Shan’s waist as a crutch. Each step ricochets a white burn through Guan Shan’s torso, and he’s trying to remember how he managed to run half a mile through the city with only the high of adrenaline and He Tian grinning at his side, wild and dark in the night and marvelous.

‘I don’t make promises I can’t keep,’ He Tian says, dial tone humming at his ear loud enough for Guan Shan to hear, and Guan Shan supposes that’s as good as it’s going to get.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider giving kudos, or [liking and reblogging on Tumblr!](https://agapaic.tumblr.com/post/174301972391/fic-water-on-the-bridge)


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